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News

I hesitate to say, partially because it hardly matters in the bigger picture, especially the current political one, but...of the last batch of songs that needed more re-re-re-etc.-re-work after going to mastering last fall, I finished the last one & sent it off yesterday.

Just a brief & less-brief note w/r/t the Esopus project...first the brief.

The launch party for the ltd. ed. Esopus Foundation/Magazine project I did w/ the bonkers-ly amazing artist Beth Campbell has been re-scheduled for Monday, Dec. 14th, 7:00-9:00 at Beth's studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And I'll be playing a short-ish solo set including the song Three Types of Reading Ambiguity from the upcoming album, which was the focus of the project w/ Beth...[READ ON]

Yesterday got the mastered&sequenced version of the album back from the mastering guru (haven't gotten to listen to it yet partially because I'm sick of & hateit but also because the at-home dad's child-bosses do not honor a traditional workday).

Sad-lariously enough, only just realized that it was also exactly 5 years ago yesterday, that recording officially started .Holy hell. Wasting life in half-decade increments.Since 1989.

Realizing that it's the killer-combo of being not only unimportant in the real goings-on of the world but also, in the ever-going back&forth of "it's almost done, this part is done" etc., both hard to keep up track of and in those details especially, really pretty boring...

but in my dumb mission to post updates on some tiny portion of the everyday work on the record (and believe me, although arguably it shouldn't be, it really is every damned day), Sunday morning I finished & sent off the final-of-many versions of the last song to mastering. Which means that...[READ ON]

I hope your Thanksgivings...

...were great. At my end, well you know how I'm always prattling & whining on about how difficult the record's been to make, how little sleep for 4+ years now, etc. etc.? Of course you do. Yield-wise, it's more my stock-in-trade than releasing actual albums. And while true, even I'm pretty tired of hearing me go on about it.

But all those art-for-crap's-sake life choices came to a head at Thanksgiving. Driving up to Massachusetts that Wednesday, got sicker & sicker, fever, vomiting. Thursday morning felt worse, with a weird & unwelcome Rice Crispie effect to each breath, a cough output I'll only describe as 'cranberry'...[READ ON]

For 10 years I taught guitar in a music store in NJ (hi, Woodside Music in Park Ridge), to mostly high schoolers w/ some adults & younger children thrown in. And in those hundreds of students there would always be a few that were better (either more talented or more accomplished, I have yet to crack that one) usually in a "hey, another perfect Led Zep solo down pat" way, which is great and as the cliche` goes, taught me a lot. But there were always a few that seemed further ahead...aesthetically, for lack of a better word, who might end up doing something really cool in the future, either artistically or just more broadly, in life etc., even if it wasn't quite clear (at least clear to me) what that might be.

So Friday morning...

...for the first time in I don't even know how long (years at this point!), we all four got together. The occasion? Well, I realize it's not big news in any sense except to us, but after 25 years as a band and for the first time in 20, we, as they say, have inked a deal. Pens were handed out presidentially. Morning beers were clinked together. The devil wrung his hands in delight & vanished in a smoke puff, laughing...[READ ON]

Last Thursday, July 31st, was a another unlikely milestone for us: the 25th anniversary of our very first show, at a club long-since gone on 42nd St., Manhattan, right next to the Port Authority. And even though there were a few hasty rehearsals first, it being the first time of many that we powered up amps & attempted to 'wow' the non-crowd (also first of many), we count it as the official starting gun.

And typically late to everything, including watch-bestowing self-ceremonies we hold every five years to congratulate ourselves on being even later to breaking up, we didn't get around to posting anything. Heck, I only noticed because I set a calendar alarm. Four years and 364 days ago. [READ ON]

It has been a while, non? Even as four years of work on the album finally wrap up, actually leaving the house to climb on a stage, in front of people and flail a guitar like a man drowning.

Kevin & I (that's charles) are playing a benefit show for P.S. 154, a public school here in Brooklyn at which (full disclosure) our oldest attends kindergarten. So yes, daddy is singing for text books & pencils...[READ ON]

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The Wrens get a call in 1989 off their first demo asking if they want to open for comeback band – The Fixx. The catch is that they must sell 1000 tickets. The Wrens fail to sell even 6 tickets and sadly, the Fixx cancel. The ‘80s draw to a close.

The Wrens get a gig as the house band on the on Cape May/Delaware Ferry. The Wrens later get fired after performing the Pixies’ “debaser” to the mostly senior citizen crowd.

1990: The Wrens move into a house in Secaucus, NJ. (The Wrens will continue to live together in various combinations and record at home for the next 15 years)...